Pieter Cornelis Plockhoy was a Dutch Mennonite and social reformer, born in the city of Zierikzee circa 1625. He moved to Amsterdam in 1648, where he became well known in the city’s intellectual circles. In 1658 he went to London where he tried unsuccessfully to gain the support of Oliver Cromwell, the antiroyalist Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, for the establishment of utopian settlements in England. Plockhoy returned to Netherlands in 1661 and in 1662 concluded a contract with the Amsterdam magistrates for the establishment of a settlement on ...